Managing debuff slots in WotLK

khel · 11/20/08, 3:59 AM

Rather than necro'ing an old thread with discussion that isn't very relevant now, I hope that it is ok to discuss prioritizing debuffs in WotLK raiding and dealing with the debuff limit here.

I am just using a sample raid composition to make discussion easier:
MMO-Champion RaidComp
I know that the best personal dps specs are constantly evolving but this is just an example of what a typical raid group might look like.

2 deathknights (6):
frost fever x2, blood plague x2, heart strike, mark of blood

3 druids (6):
faerie fire, earth & moon, moonfire (IS will probably be skipped)
rake, rip, mangle

3 hunters (4):
hunter's mark, serpent sting x3

2 mages (9):
ignite x2, pyroblast x2, improved scorch, frostfire x2, living bomb x2

3 paladins (4):
judgement of light, judgement of wisdom, righteous vengeance, heart of the crusader

3 priests (5):
shadow word pain, devouring plague, vampiric touch, vampiric embrace, mind flay

3 rogues (6):
deadly poison x3, rupture x3

2 shamans (0):

2 warlocks (10):
coa/cod x2, corruption x2, immolate x2, siphon life, unstable affliction, haunt, shadow embrace

2 warriors (8/9):
taunt (when applicable), sunder armor, thunderclap, demoralizing shout, MS, deep wounds, rend x2, blood frenzy

58/59 debuffs total

*Note that some overlapping debuffs were skipped, such as Trauma because Mangle is already applied. Do these still take up individual debuff slots or has it been fixed?

How will your guild deal with managing these debuffs? In the past we have avoided using affliction warlocks, had rogues using instant poison instead of deadly, asked hunters to avoid using serpent stings or pets that apply debuffs, and for druids who might be dpsing to skip rake and use ferocious bite instead of rip. Even after doing this for this sample raid setup though, we are still over the debuff cap! Do we have to exclude a dps warrior or a warlock to free up these debuffs and grab another hunter instead?

How will you prioritize these debuff slots?

Arakan · 11/20/08, 4:09 AM

This thread has a lot of relevant information and discussion regarding this topic.

Ingmar · 11/20/08, 4:20 AM

At the moment I can't say much about a lot of other debuff slots since I don't know their exact damage comparison, but at least 1 hunter should be keeping up serpent sting if you want them to optimize DPS. This is because of [Glyph of Steady Shot], which basically means that your hunters' DPS goes up ~3-4%. Cycling in a sting for all of them would be a waste of mana / time for them, one is enough.

Also, a few things you've missed:
- You forgot mindflay for the priests, and the debuffs are per-priest.
- 1 Warlock should be using curse of the elements to increase magic damage by 10%.
- I think elemental shamans use up a debuff slot for their totem of wrath, at least in PvP I noticed the totem giving me a debuff.

As for prioritizing, I'd say have rogues drop deadly poison for instant for starters, and I'm not really sure if demo-shout and shadow embrace stack. Also, earth and moon will probably overwrite the warlock CoE when it procs, but will need re-application after. Not sure if that's really optimal to use. Other debuffs I'll leave to people more experienced at 80

khel · 11/20/08, 4:42 AM

Originally Posted by Arakan

This thread already has a lot of relevant information and discussion regarding this topic.

Lots of good information there and relates to this topic, but imo these are separate discussions.

Originally Posted by Ingmar

At the moment I can't say much about a lot of other debuff slots since I don't know their exact damage comparison, but at least 1 hunter should be keeping up serpent sting if you want them to optimize DPS. This is because of [Glyph of Steady Shot], which basically means that your hunters' DPS goes up ~3-4%. Cycling in a sting for all of them would be a waste of mana / time for them, one is enough.

Also, a few things you've missed:
- You forgot mindflay for the priests, and the debuffs are per-priest.
- 1 Warlock should be using curse of the elements to increase magic damage by 10%.
- I think elemental shamans use up a debuff slot for their totem of wrath, at least in PvP I noticed the totem giving me a debuff.

As for prioritizing, I'd say have rogues drop deadly poison for instant for starters, and I'm not really sure if demo-shout and shadow embrace stack. Also, earth and moon will probably overwrite the warlock CoE when it procs, but will need re-application after. Not sure if that's really optimal to use. Other debuffs I'll leave to people more experienced at 80

Are you sure about totem of wrath? I guess it works similarly to heart of the crusader then, but only applies to spell crit. (In the setup I listed there is no elemental shaman anyway.) E&M makes CoE unnecessary...it is applied and refreshed on every single wrath or starfire cast. I didn't realize that mindflay still consumed a debuff slot though...just makes the problem worse.

Ingmar · 11/20/08, 5:23 AM

Originally Posted by khel

Are you sure about totem of wrath? I guess it works similarly to heart of the crusader then, but only applies to spell crit. (In the setup I listed there is no elemental shaman anyway.) E&M makes CoE unnecessary...it is applied and refreshed on every single wrath or starfire cast. I didn't realize that mindflay still consumed a debuff slot though...just makes the problem worse.

According to this wow-forums topic, you're indeed right about heart of the crusader and TOW not stacking, but both are a debuff.

I was under the impression that earth and moon was a chance, but it is indeed a 100% chance, my bad.

klüger · 11/20/08, 5:26 AM

Spriests can use Glyph of Mind Flay to remove one debuffslot pr. spriest.

mek · 11/20/08, 6:19 AM

I recall reading a blue post that mechanically, the Glyph of Mind Flay doesn't remove the snare, it reduces the snare to 0%, so I would guess it still eats a debuff slot.

Rannasha · 11/20/08, 6:24 AM

Originally Posted by Ingmar

AAlso, earth and moon will probably overwrite the warlock CoE when it procs, but will need re-application after. Not sure if that's really optimal to use.

Earth and Moon is a 100% proc on 2 of the standard spam-spells for Moonkins. The basic rule is that whenever there's a Moonkin around, the Warlocks need not worry about CoE (with obvious exceptions of different people dpsing different targets). This doesn't reduce the number of debuffs however, since the Warlock will just switch to a damaging curse.

Ktharsis · 11/20/08, 9:29 AM

Originally Posted by Ingmar

At the moment I can't say much about a lot of other debuff slots since I don't know their exact damage comparison, but at least 1 hunter should be keeping up serpent sting if you want them to optimize DPS. This is because of [Glyph of Steady Shot], which basically means that your hunters' DPS goes up ~3-4%. Cycling in a sting for all of them would be a waste of mana / time for them, one is enough.

For your MM hunters, Serpent Sting represents significantly more than 3-4% of DPS because they need a sting up in order to trigger the Chimera Shot effect.

For non-MM hunters, I had thought from earlier testing that you had to have your own Serpent Sting up to get the benefit from the glyph. Has it now been confirmed that this is not the case? I missed that post if so, and haven't been able to find it.

Ingmar · 11/20/08, 9:45 AM

Originally Posted by Ktharsis

For your MM hunters, Serpent Sting represents significantly more than 3-4% of DPS because they need a sting up in order to trigger the Chimera Shot effect.

For non-MM hunters, I had thought from earlier testing that you had to have your own Serpent Sting up to get the benefit from the glyph. Has it now been confirmed that this is not the case? I missed that post if so, and haven't been able to find it.

He has 3 BM hunters in his setup, but obviously it would be different for MM's, yes. A nice synergy would be to have 2BMs and 1 MM to keep the sting up with chimera.

Although I'm not sure, the description doesn't mention anything about "your own" serpent sting, thus I assumed that wouldn't be the case. I'd be extremely disappointed if it were the case that you personally have to keep the sting up for the glyph. It's like asking every mage to keep their own scorch up.

Uglesh · 11/20/08, 10:00 AM

If you do bring Affliction Locks, you might want to ensure they DO NOT spec into Imp Shadow Bolt as it will just push another debuff off that will yeild greater benefit.

Sadly in the current state, people will have to definately make some hard choices and possibly sacrifice some dps to avoid more critical debuffs being pushed off.

Ralnar · 11/20/08, 10:09 AM

I'm pretty sure that Imp Shadow Bolt proc is now the following personal buff and no longer a debuff:
Shadow Mastery - Spell - World of Warcraft

Romerz · 11/20/08, 10:36 AM

Originally Posted by Ingmar

As for prioritizing, I'd say have rogues drop deadly poison for instant for starters,

Combat rogues actually have a talent called Savage Combat now, which requires the target to be poisoned in order to increase the rogues AP by 2% and dmg to that target by 1%. Obviously Mutilate rogues require poisoned targets in order to do 50% more damage aswell. I won't even pretend to weight this against other classes, as I just don't know enough about them.

Having rash statements like this cannot come up with a decent solution however. I would expect it to require a rather time consuming process of actually working out just what are the best solutions in order to maximize DPS overall for the raid. This may actually be near impossible for 99% of raids who don't use the exact same raid setup, with the exact same players and with the exact same play style of those players and having the encounters be very linear.

erragal · 11/20/08, 10:59 AM

Until we get some indication from blizzard that they actually intend to fix this rather serious issue the best thing to discuss is which debuffs should be the first to go. As a balance druid I can safely say removing glyphed/T7 insect swarm is a fairly minor overall DPS hit (On the order of 100-200 DPS depending on wrath usage) especially considering its' lack of crit scaling.

I don't believe anyone is so intimately familiar with all the various class DPS intricacies to make judgements without some guidance. Certainly we could go research each individual class thread, but the advantage to this thread is having various people pool their knowledge and establish some standards.

Some Debuffs that need to be added:

From my understanding for hunters the best non-BM pets are cats or scorpids both of which apply a very significant DPS dot that scales extremely well.

I was under the impression unholy DK's had two additional debuffs they took up. One is their CoE/E&M Ebon Plaguebringer effect that still goes up because it has a self-benefit as well. I'm not personally familiar with the other.

Flame Shock for elemental shaman is necessary to their DPS.

Some information we definitely need:

What is the drop off from deadly poison to instant poison for various rogue specs?

What are the lowest DPS dots for the various classes with multiples?

Evil · 11/20/08, 3:49 PM

In terms of priests, you cannot drop Vampiric Touch or Shadow Word Pain because they make up a significant proportion of DPS. Mind Flay's debuff is also non-negotiable. Vampiric Embrace, in its current form, is eminently skippable if you don't want or need the group healing. Misery and Shadow Weaving may or may not be necessary - Shadow Weaving is a 10% personal DPS loss if they priest cannot keep it up, so it is an important debuff, but not more so than 3% more raid damage. Misery is similarly skippable, but I cannot conceive of a scenario in which it does not merit its debuff slot. In summary:

VT: Your priest won't thank you for making him skip it, because it will fuck his DPS.
SW:P: Your priest won't thank you for making him skip it, because it will fuck his DPS.
Mind Flay: Your priest won't thank you for making him skip it, because it will fuck his DPS.
Shadow Weaving: Your priest won't thank you for making him skip it, because it will fuck his DPS.
VE: Eminently missable if you don't want or need the group healing.
Misery: Theoretically skippable, but almost certainly worth its slot.

Since I haven't played WotlK at all, this information may not be entirely accurate. But it probably is.